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Wednesday, 16 March 2011

Displacement maps - making creases on clothes

So I was telling Jonny how to make a displacement map for creases in jeans, but it works for anything with creases, such as terrain.

So, I found a texture of denim, and I picked one with creases already in it. That way, you can use them for a reference to draw on.

Open your denim texture photoshop, then create a layer above that.

Now get the brush tool, select a soft edged tip shape, and half the opacity or so. The colour will be black but we want it to darken as you layer it on.

Now set the brush size to the size of your crease. If you're copying creases you have a guideline, but if not, you will have to make it up. Try to be as realistic as possible, and remember it will be layered.

Draw over the crease in one click of the mouse.

Next, shrink your tip size and then draw down the middle of the lines you drew, and repeat this step maybe once or twice more.

When you are done, delete your denim texture layer and it will leave you with a greyscale image.

This method produces an inverted map, at this stage you might want to invert the colours, but you can also set the displacement value in max to a negative number for the same effect.

Save the image, transparency isn't necessary so JPG will do fine.

All there is left to do is to apply the textures to something in 3DS max. Your displacement map is entered as a bitmap to the displacement map slot in a standard material. The default displacement setting is 100. You will need to make it a negative value if your creases are done in white. You might also want to lower the value to make the creases more subtle.

Below is the texture I used and displacement map I produced.

I tried to make an even better one, so you can see what happens if you put more effort in.

Here I used the smudge tool in PS to create even softer edges to the creases, but you can see it doesn't necessarily make it look better!